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Washington Post article up!

It took a while (two and a half months) for it to see the light of day, but the article I wrote about D.C. parent activists and their opinions on the city’s new legalization law is finally LIVE. You can access it here.

I love the pics – they’re fascinating. Both Vonneva Pettigrew and Joyce Nalepka offered the Post photos of themselves during their heyday, and they’re amazing. I’ve never seen them before. I’m copying and posting them here, because I LOVE Vonneva’s Louis Vuitton clutch.

Vonneva Pettigrew (center) talks with First Lady Nancy Reagan at the White House in the 1980s.

That’s really the issue though, isn’t it? No one really has full access to everything these women did. When I was talking to Nalepka in February she told me that she had over half a million pages of material in her home office – that’s an archive in and of itself. But she and her husband are moving soon and who knows what will happen to all that stuff. I’m hoping to get over there and see it, but it’s always a matter of time.

Overall I’m pretty happy with the article. It’s not the complete story, but it can’t be – not in 2,000 words. There’s always so much that goes unmentioned, that’s elided. And some of the language is a bit more fluffy than I’d like, but my editor said it had to fit the tone of the Style section, so there wasn’t much I could do about that. Still, I hope the women like it. I feel I portrayed them fairly, and even though I voted for legalization, I can see where they’re coming from. The D.C. law is full of holes, and the people who opposed it have as much of a right to have their story told as those who supported it. After all, they’re not trying to Andy Harris the thing – Vonneva just wants D.C. residents to be educated about pot’s effects. What’s so wrong with that?